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Vesayen
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People I cant stand..... those who read a book then saw the movie for the book and arogantly say "The book was so much better!"
CONGRA-JA-FREAK-IN-LATIONS! You read a book? Want a cookie? If there is anything that pisses me off after greedy ceo's, its arrogant psuedo wanna be intellectuals. I read 3 books a week and never mention it on conversation, which is the reason this pisses me off so much especially. I would think a large chunk of poly are "readers"-people who read a descent amount so most of you can proboably share my frustration.
Reading a book is no great acomplishment, if you think it is and feel like your special for reading a book, it means your actually mentally deficient but the world has been too polite to inform you of that fact.
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mrmitchell
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I don't read anything except the warning labels on electric appliances that warn me not to use my toaster in the pool.
But I agree with you. I didn't come to see if some ****in book was better, *******, I came to watch the ****ing movie.
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Vesayen
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Example of bad: Lord of the rings-where there are so many proper nouns introduced on each page that you confuse people with mountain ranges with battles-you need to keep notes to make sense of it....
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Space05us
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quote:
the book is most of the times better than the movie |
maybe I misworded my post, I was trying to point out that you dont have to be smart to like a book.
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Rufus T. Firefly
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is one way of saying it, though I prefer "mensch"
Sep 2000
time: 07:31
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Here's the deal:
Great books tend to make mediocre movies. Random examples: A Thousand Acres, The Human Stain, The Great Gatsby, Orlando, Beloved. Why? Because great novels hav a richness and complexity that are not easily rendered in 2 hours on film. Moreover, film is an awful medium for capturing a characters interior psychological state -- which is why adaptations of Henry James, F. Scott Fiztgerald, and pretty much any modernist tend to fall flat on screen. Beyond that, the market for great books, and the aesthetic expectations of that market, are quite different from the market for films; the result is that, when Hollywood adapts books for its market, it also has to alter the aesthetics, generally with unfortunate results (think here of the recent Scarlet Letter and its appalling happy ending).
By contrast, mediocre books often make good or even great movies. Random examples: Gone with the Wind, The Godfather, Blade Runner, The Shining, Touch of Evil. Why? Because their popular sensibility matches that of Hollywood, and they are often "polished" in their adaptation (especially true of The Godfather); the movie can act like a second, better draft rather than an adaptation. Also, if significant changes are easier to make in order to improve the text (as was the case with The Shining), since the text is not considered "sacred."
So sometimes the book is better than the movie, and some people know that. Get over it.
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Flubber
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With a view of the Rockies
Aug 2000
time: 22:31
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vesayen
RELAX
people who mention they read something are not asserting their intellectual superiority, they are just mentioning something related to the topic at hand- IF discussing a movie well golly shucks a comment on the book on which it is based is not out of order
I shudder to think what you would say if someone commented they had seen the movie at an IMAX
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Jon Miller
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I can finish fiction that is 400 pages or so in ~8 hours (or less)
there is always enough time to read a book
Jon Miller
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Comrade Tassadar
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Book X was better than it's movie.
Haha, aren't I so intellectual? Much more than all of you barbarians.
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DaShi
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The Taste of Japan
Sep 2000
time: 05:31
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quote:
Originally posted by The Mad Monk
Whenever I read a thread like this, I immediately think of Jurassic Park. I read it when it first came out. I loved it -- must have gone through it at least a half dozen times, and it helped mold my thoughts on the concept of "responsible science".
Then the movie came out.
I was looking forward to it -- here was one of my favorite all-time reads, brought to life on the silver screen! In a rare instance of zealotry, I actually mange to see it the first week.
...
I'm sure it's a good movie.
...
That was the last thing I was thinking when I stumbled out of that theatre. They had taken that masterpiece, ripped the guts out, changed characters to the point they were unrecognizable, merged and deleted, and screwed up the message. They made it so damn...Hollywood.
I will never forgive them for that. |
But if you hadn't read the book, you'd have probably enjoyed the movie for it's breatheless special effects and Speilbergian thrills.
People generally enjoy the first version of something they experience, especially if that first experience was extraordinarily memorable somehow. The second incarnation rarely lives up the the nostalgic precedent set by the first.
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Rufus T. Firefly
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is one way of saying it, though I prefer "mensch"
Sep 2000
time: 07:31
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There's another factor at work here as well, which has been given it's best voice by Mad Monk in his discussion of Jurassic Park. I think of it as "bad car syndrome." Some years ago, auto manufacturers commissioned a study and found that people who were dissatisfied with their cars were 10 times as likely to voice that dissatisfaction than people who were satisfied with their cars were likely to express their satisfaction. In other words, we're far more likely to call attention to our expectation not being met than to our expectations being met or even exceeded.
I find this is true with movies in general, and adaptations in particular. First of all, if I've read the book already and liked it, then I'm going in with a certain set of expectations; maybe those expectations are unrealistic or unfair, but it is impossible to set them aside. If the movie fails to meet those exprectations, then I'm going to complain, and the obvious form that complaint is going to take is "the book was better" -- because it is the very "goodness" of the book that set my expectations of the movie to begin with.
By contrast, when a movie is based on a book I love and is just as good -- Get Shorty and The Last Temptation of Christ both come to mind -- I will praise the film, but rarely praise it by saying it is as good as the book -- because that is what I expected, and I'm less likely to call attention to my expectations being met.
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04-11-2003 10:10
then its probably quite normal for the movie to come off second best.
@ Duke 
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